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The American Dream as Described by Marco Rubio is Real -- But It's Under Assault

August 31, 2012

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Grand Blanc, Michigan, and Sandy. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush.

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: I just wanted to let you know that I'm really, really excited about Mitt. I didn't go into this convention for him. I was really disappointed. I thought, "Oh, man, another McCain." But as the days went by and I listened and I watched I got excited every night and looked forward to it, and then last night was the clincher, and I really am behind Mitt Romney a hundred percent.

RUSH: You know, I had the same sense that you just expressed. When I watched the first night of the convention, well, even Monday there were shots of people in the convention hall. Even though Monday they canceled it, they were there. They gaveled it to order, did some things procedurally for ten minutes, shut it down. But there were people there being interviewed. And then on Tuesday, when they got going and the crowd shots and so forth, and Romney's name would be mentioned, there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm. I had people there who were telling me they felt bad, the place was dead, and it clearly to me was not Romney's party.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: It was as though everybody thought we had a candidate that had won by virtue of attrition rather than rabid support. But, like you, I think by the close of business last night, it was his convention.

CALLER: Well, everybody was fantastic, all the speakers. And I loved that Martinez, or that girl from New Mexico.

CALLER: Well, I liked her attitude. I mean, she had a down-to-earth attitude. They all did. They weren't snooty and they weren't Republican --

RUSH: Exactly.

CALLER: -- and they weren't rich. You know, they were just down-home people, just like everybody else.

RUSH: Exactly. It was real. And the stories that they told about America were real. Here, grab sound bite 11. Every one of these speakers had a story like this, a quintessential American story. This is what this country has always been, and this is what's under assault. This is what Obama, the Democrats, don't want people to believe is possible anymore.

RUBIO: My dad used to tell us, "En este pais ustedes van a poder lograr todas las cosas que nosotros no pudimos." "In this country, you're gonna be able to accomplish all the things we never could." A few years ago during a speech, I noticed the bartender behind a portable bar in the back of the ballroom. I remembered my father who worked for many years as a banquet bartender. He was grateful for the work he had. But that's not the life he wanted for us. You see, he stood behind a bar in the back of the room all those years, so one day I could stand behind a podium in the front of a room.

RUSH: That's it. In a nutshell, parents want a better life for their kids than they had themselves. That's the point of parenthood, and America is what made that possible. Every generation was that way. And now we've gotten to the point, we've reached a point in our generational evolution where increasing numbers of parents don't think it can happen anymore. Parents today, with their kids still living at home, with mountains of student loan debt, do not see how their kids are gonna end up doing better than they did, and it's ripping their hearts out. And we've got a political party that wants people to believe, "Yep, that's the new norm. Those days are over. We gotta deal with the reality here. The economy that Bush left us with is so bad, we've thrown everything we've got and it and it defies being fixed. This may be the new norm."

We have a political party and a president who want people to think that Marco Rubio's story, that never really was real anyway. That's just a bunch of folklore of an America, but the real America is all these people that never had parents like that, never helped their kids get ahead, and that's who we gotta make good for. It's perverted, and that element of the American dream is what's under assault right now. They want more and more people thinking that that's no longer possible here.

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RUSH: I'm dead serious. I wouldn't-a said it otherwise. When Marco Rubio tells the story of his bartender dad, and when he says, "He stood behind a bar in the back of the room all those years so that one day I could stand behind a podium in the front of a room," I have people that e-mail who want to nitpick that and translate it literally. "You want to tell me that Rubio's dad was standing in the back of the room thinking one day his kid was gonna be a senator?"

I don't know. I really feel sorry for people like you who don't understand the message. A devoted father was doing the best he could in his circumstances. He showed up every day and kept working so as to make a better life for his son. Whatever it ended up being. And that's exactly what this country has always been. My father... I'm sorry for boring you with this story again, but my father considered himself a failure as a father because he couldn't convince me to go to college.

To him, there was no future if you didn't.

That was his life.

He was trying to inculcate in me the formative experiences of his life, and he lived through the Great Depression. He said if you didn't go to college, you didn't have a prayer. Not only of not getting a job, you weren't gonna be able to keep friends that you had because they were gonna surpass you intellectually. They were going to get better jobs than you did. You'd lose everything you had in common with them when you were growing up. His singular purpose as a father was that I do better than he did.

And he thought, up until just two years before he died, that he had failed as a parent. The point is that's what America was! Where else in the world do people even dream these things? Most places in this world, in the history of humanity, is bondage and tyranny. Oppression. It isn't freedom. Everybody's not born to freedom. Everybody's not born to liberty. Most people who have lived on this planet didn't have anywhere near an opportunity to even get close to realizing their dreams.

All they were able to do was dream, and those were even crushed by oppressive, tyrannical leaders who didn't want people trying and improve themselves. Most people in the world, from the beginnings of time, wherever you were born, and however you were born, that was your life. If you were lucky to live very long. Then America comes along and there's a fundamental, overwhelming change rooted in founding documents. Freedom coming from God, and that the natural yearning of the human spirit is to be free and to be happy -- and to be good, to be excellent.

They codify it in our documents, and it soon took over, and that became one of the driving purposes of raising children in America, to ensure that they did well (and hopefully better) than their parents. One of the reasons the country is in trouble and one of the reasons it's fraying at our fabric is because there are a lot of parents today who don't even think they have a chance, much less their kids. And they're not even thinking their kids can have a better life!

Folks, I see examples of a culture that I can't relate to when I listen to... It will not serve a purpose to mention any names, but this is a story about a football player in the NFL who's always been in trouble. Well, hey, I'll mention a name. I'll tell you two stories. The first story is a football player who is very good, but he's had a troubled life, and he's been a problem everywhere he's been. And if he gets in one of his funks, then he doesn't play and he refuses to be any good, and yet he takes the paycheck.

But nobody does anything about it, except you get cut or traded from team to team. His latest team tried to do something about it. So they brought in a former player to talk to this guy. And after the conference between the former player and the current malcontent player, the player said he felt like he had a new lease on life because he had just learned that it was okay to be cordial to people. It was okay to treat people nicely. And I'm thinking, "What must his childhood have been if he's just now learning that?"

He's around 30 now. What must his childhood have been if it's a revelation to him now that it's okay to be cordial? Folks, there is a cultural breakdown in the fabric of this country that some of you are not aware of. I mean, it's bad. That's why this convention to me was such an upper, because it hearkened back to simple possibilities. Possibilities that exist for all human beings simply because they live in this country. It's a singular opportunity. Now, the other name. I'll go ahead and mention this because this is illustrative, too.

The Dallas Cowboys have a potential huge star wide receiver by the name of Dez Bryant. Now, Dez Bryant's mother had him when she was 16, and he's had a really tough bringing-up. For example, the general manager... This was a point of controversy when he came out. I think he went to Oklahoma State. He came out of Oklahoma State and he's in the process of visiting teams before the draft, and the general manager for one of the teams in the NFL actually said, "So, your mother was a prostitute; is that right?"

That leaked out, and that general manager caught all kinds of hell. Anyway, poor Dez has run up a lot of debt. He got money that he's never dreamed of, never seen before as an NFL first-round draft choice. He's in debt. He owes people at the mall. He owes jewelers and so forth. The Dallas Cowboys have had to put 24-hour security on him to keep him out of strip clubs and all these places. I look at the media writing about this, and, see, it... (sigh) Well, I have to be careful how I say this.

But "avoiding trouble" was something that was standard operating procedure. You didn't really have to have it drilled into you, and our parents didn't need to send security details out with us as adults to make sure that we behaved. But because of the cultural problems that we've had, these are the steps that are now necessary. It almost makes me cry when I see what's happening to people in this country.

At the same time, we have a political party which tries to reinforce this idea that this notion that you can do good and be better than your parents, that never was really anyway. That's what Obama and the Democrats want as many people as possible to believe, and it sickens me. That's why this convention was such an upper for me. They other side is actually out saying, "Oh, that was just a bunch of BS. You know, that's an illusion. That never really was the case. The rich got where they are by stealing from everybody!"

Or stealing or cheating or whatever they did to people. And that's how the US got big, by the way, 'cause it went out and it stole the things that it wanted from the rest of the world. So success is illegitimate to this president. It's illegitimate. And furthermore, it's worthy of being targeted. And there are votes in it. I'm sorry, it sickens me. It just absolutely sickens me to see so much human potential not even have a chance, and to have so many people in this country not even understand what being inspired is.

Then when people do try to inspire, like happened at this convention, they're the ones that get made fun of. They are the ones who are impugned. It's their intentions which are said to be phony and dishonest. This convention, the Republican convention, if it had a theme, it was not just about America being the greatest nation it can be. It was about maximizing human potential that is possible because we're Americans.

It is being an American that makes that possible. The left wants to make sure people don't even try. So they mock trying. They mock people like Romney and others who have attempted to teach others and inspired others to achieve what they have or to be even better. You think back in your life. There's one person, and maybe more than one. There is at least one person in your life who told you or showed you or demonstrated somehow that you were capable of much more than you thought you were.

It's happened to me.

It could be the teacher that you hated at the time, or it could have been one of your parents. It could have been a friend. It could have been anybody. But somebody in anybody's life has always been there to show you that you're better than even you think you are. I'm not talking about in any ego standpoint or sense. I'm simply talking about capability, ability. The simple ability to achieve something, to be successful. And to see that whole concept tamped down and portrayed as only available to a select few in a very small club? No.

That's what this convention was about, was showing, "No, no, no, no. Unh-uh." You know the old phrase, "ordinary people doing extraordinary things"? We had one after another at this convention telling their stories. And the more people invest in themselves and follow their dreams and use their talents and ambition, the less they're going to need government or a politician or a government program. In that process, the politician or the government program begins to lose its power -- and that, we can't have.

So the party that gets all the credit for all the compassion, is actually and literally the party that is trying to strip all of that potential from as many human beings as possible. They're making a deal with them. "Don't try any of that. Don't buy this business that you can be good at something. The deck's stacked against you. All you're gonna get is heartbreak and be disappointed. You'll get fired a bunch of times. It ain't gonna happen. Let us handle it for you.

"Let us take you over the hard spots because, look, we don't think you have much ability anyway." A characteristic of people on the left is to look down with contempt at average people and think that they don't have the ability anyway. That's why people on the left are needed. That's why big government's needed, because people otherwise can't do for themselves, and that is just utter BS. So I just cringe when I learn of these stories.

What must your upbringing have been like, if you've been taught that bad things will happen to you if you're nice to people? What have you been taught? Maybe that's how you have to stay alive. Maybe you have to be defiant. You have to be intimidating to make sure somebody doesn't push you off the cliff or whatever. What must that be like? But that doesn't have to be what this country is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It's Open Line Friday, El Rushbo to Galveston. This is Larson. Larson, thanks for waiting. Nice to have you here.

CALLER: Oh, it's nice to be on with you, Rush. I've been listening to you for years and years, and it's a bright spot three hours in most of my days.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate that and understand it.

CALLER: Okay. So here's my point. I saw Mitt's speech last night and was absolutely blown away by it. I thought it was a wonderful speech, and two things went through my mind as I watched that speech. I heard American exceptionalism being trumpeted, and I absolutely loved it. It felt like you could be allowed again to love America. And that took me back, then, to when I was in fifth grade, 'cause I'm a year younger than you are. And when I was in fifth grade it was the year President Kennedy was shot. I remember I was in the principal's office. Not for a bad reason, 'cause I think probably my mom was coming to pick me up for a doctor's appointment. So, anyway, I was in there and I guess news of the president had just come across the wire, and my principal came out and just told everybody that some damn right-winger just shot the president. And I was kind of stunned.

RUSH: Isn't it amazing how things don't change?

CALLER: I know.

RUSH: You probably are gonna continue to tell me stories about your teachers were telling you how rotten the country was, even back in the sixties. My teachers didn't, and our principal didn't come out and say that -- right-winger -- but we weren't in Texas, either. But how about the Times Square Diaper Bomber, underwear or whatever it was, Mayor Doomberg goes up, "Yeah, it's probably some Tea Party freak that doesn't like Obama's health care plan." And we find out it was a legitimate Islamofascist. I mean, we have real enemies. But I'll tell you something, Larson, and don't doubt me on this, to the Democrat Party today, there's no greater enemy than the Republican conservative. No greater enemy than conservatives. No greater enemy than the Tea Party. They fear us, and they are singularly united on defeating us more than anything else in their world.